Game Review: Metal Slug Anthology (PSP)

With all seven Metal Slug games, this $40 collection on the PSP seems like a …

Sometimes it's the games that seem the easiest to port that turn out to be the most frustrating. Take, for instance, the Metal Slug titles. If you've never played a Metal Slug game, now is a good time to start; with the tenth anniversary of the series upon us, SNK Playmore has unleashed their Anthology across multiple platforms. While the NEO GEO originals can cost upwards of $100, this collection of all seven Metal Slug games can be yours for under $50 on your platform of choice. We've already looked at the Wii version, and it was a solid collection that had some oddly obnoxious controls. The PSP should handle these games perfectly. It has a nice screen, four face buttons, and a functional d-pad. So what went wrong?

The Metal Slug games are simple: you move from left to right, and sometimes vertically, shooting everything in your path. Sometimes you jump into vehicles that offer more firepower—the titular slugs—and sometimes you can even grab a plane and the game turns into something approaching a traditional sh'mup. I'm not going to say Metal Slug did this style of play first, lest someone in comments hit up Wikipedia to prove a point with obscure titles and years, but I dare say it perfected the formula. The games were about great level design, beautiful animations, funny death scenes, and of course great multiplayer. The games had character to spare.

Upon first playing the PSP ports of these games I was again drawn into them and had a great time. The package you get is bare bones, just like the Wii version. You get each game, a few options for how you'd like it displayed on the screen, and ad hoc multiplayer. That's it. The games are strong though, and each of the seven is worth playing. Metal Slug fans are going to be happy here, and I liked the responsive controls.

The problem is that the PSP can't seem to handle loading the games on the fly. I'm not just talking about slow load times here, although before the level they are slow. I'm talking about random pauses to load in the middle of each level. This gets frustrating when there are multiple enemies on the screen, and it's even more baffling when not much is going on. These frequent pauses interrupt the flow of the game, and that's death in a game like Metal Slug where you're in the zone for long stretches of play and really enjoying yourself. That's not the worst of it though: there are loading freezes sometimes when you pick up a new weapon. There are loading pauses when you select your character at the beginning of each round. These are tiny little things, I have no clue why the PSP can't handle them. The level loaded fine, but you have to load the machine gun from the disc? Really?

Still, the games are great fun, and the price for all seven isn't bad. This is one of the those times when I hate the "Skip, Rent, Buy" system, because I do think this game is worth your money, but the loading problems seem like lazy coding to me. This game is a better buy than the Wii version overall, but those loading times mar what is otherwise a great collection. I'm hoping for better things from the PS2 version launching later this month.